


Rest

by hereforthehurts (orphan_account)



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: (this time is platonic i actually love zukki so much), Angst with a Happy Ending, FebuWhump2021, Fever, Gen, Happy Ending, I promise, Katara and Zuko (Avatar) are Parents, Multi, Poisoned Toph, Poisoning, Sick Toph, Some angst, The Gaang As A Family, Toph Beifong and Zuko are Siblings, Toph whump, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 17:14:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29264118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/hereforthehurts
Summary: Who knew that what it took to finally get them all back in one room together like they used to was one of their friend dying?
Relationships: Katara & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Suki/Zuko (Avatar), Toph Beifong & Katara, Toph Beifong & Zuko
Comments: 1
Kudos: 38





	Rest

**Author's Note:**

> For febuwhump day 7: poisoning ! It's not my proudest work, but it took me a while, so .. . . enjoy <3

Zuko runs through the seemingly never ending corridors of the fire castle.  
  
  
  
His neatly tied up hair began to unravel, long robes flowing behind him, threatening to trip him over if he’s not careful enough. Word spreads fast around the castle—but unfortunately, not fast enough to get him. But who could he blame, anyway? he was just out of a six-hour meeting with the nation’s military generals, where he had told everyone that he couldn’t be disturbed—and he’s only regretting that now.   
  
_Toph, Toph, Toph—_  
  
  
  
His mind kept screaming her name. Zuko urges his feet to run faster.   
  
When he finally arrives, the wing of the castle where his friends currently resides in was filled with people. Guards stood outside the building. They parted through with a slight cower when he walks by, and Zuko didn’t realize how terrifying his expression had been until he walked past the main door.   
  
“Zuko! You—are you okay?” Sokka was the one who greeted him first, flinching when he saw his face. Suki, Mai and Ty Lee was on his side, looking as worried and surprised as he is.   
  
“No, _no_ I’m not okay,” He started with an irritated growl. “Where’s Toph? Are the healers here? Where’s Katara? We need to—”  
  
“Zuko,” Sokka approaches him, with a face he knows too well. A hand reaches for his shoulder. “Zuko, you need to calm down.”   
  
“No I am _not_ going to _fucking calm down—”_ He slaps his boyfriend’s hand away, “I need to see Toph, _now.”_  
  
“You aren’t seeing Toph. Not like this.”   
  
“What the _fuck,_ Sokka— _”  
  
_ “Zuko.”   
  
The corridor goes silent as Zuko tries to even out his breaths to prevent him from bursting. The other four watches.   
  
Thick pain rises in his throat. His eyes stings, watering. “She’s dying,” he croaks out. “She’s dying.”   
  
“And we won’t let her die,” Suki says softly, a hand reaching for his cheek. A thumb brushes his over his scar gently, and he melts into his girlfriend’s touch as he always does. “We _won’t._ But in order to do that, we all need you to be level headed. Okay?”   
  
He sniffs, wiping away some of the tears that had spilled out. “Yeah. Yeah. I—fuck, I’m sorry, Sokka.”   
  
The other boy shakes his head, joining both of them for a quick hug. “She’s in there, with Katara—rough shape, and they need you to be there for her. The healers are working on a cure—”  
  
“—Your orders, Zuko,” Mai cuts him off. “We need your orders.”   
  
Zuko felt lightheaded. There’s too much to do, too much to think about, and yet his mind was only yelling about one thing. _Toph, Toph, Toph—  
  
_ “I… Get my mother to the healers, she knows best about poisons. Suki, I need you to stay here and stand guard, I—where’s Aang?”   
  
“He’s with the royal guards, searching for the suspect,” Sokka tells him. “Went as soon as he heard about it.”   
  
“I can go with him,” Ty Lee suggests. “I can bring Azula, too—”  
  
“ _No,”_ Suki and Sokka says almost immediately, but Zuko thinks about it for a while. _Azula…_   
  
“You can take her,” He nods. “Just keep her in line. I want—I want whoever did this _dead.”_  
  
Sokka’s eyes widen. “Whoa, okay now, Zu—”  
  
“ _No,”_ He seethes. “I don’t—I don’t care, okay, _shit—_ I can _not_ express how much _I don’t fucking care._ Find them. Hunt them down. Do whatever you need to get them.”   
  
Mai nods gravely. “Consider it done.”   
  
He watches Mai and Ty Lee run out of the door, leaving the dark atmosphere behind them, and for a moment, Zuko could imagine his sister with them, like they used to, murder in their minds—but this time, they were on his side.   
  
  
  
  
How times have changed.

  
  
  
But yet they were still in the same kind of danger, after all.   
  
  
  
  
“Zuko,” Suki spoke up, her head looking up from her position on his shoulder, “You should… you should come in there.”   
  
  
_Toph. Fuck, Toph.  
  
  
_ He wanted to break down all over again.   
  
“I need you to listen to me, Zuko,” Sokka says, with a tone so serious that Zuko thought he imagined it coming out of his mouth. The grip on his shoulder tightens. “Katara’s in there with her. They’re both exhausted, and drained, and Toph, she’s…”  
  
He didn’t finish his sentence, but Zuko didn’t need him to.   
  
“Promise me you’d take care of them,” He whispers. “I can’t—I can’t get in there, Zuko. I _can’t_.”  
  
  
Zuko swallows and hold back the urge to cry with him. “Okay. I promise.”  
  
  
Sokka lets him go.   
  
  
The steps towards Toph’s room felt like forever. Sweat races down his neck, his vision spinning. He doesn’t know what to expect when he opens the tall bedroom door slowly, the creaking of the door hinge breaking the grim silence that filled the place.   
  
  
  
Katara sits on the middle of the bed, leaning against the headboard. She presses a finger against her lips, telling him to be silent, and in her lap, there was Toph.   
  
  
Curled up into Katara, small and trembling. He could see her face clearer the closer he gets, ashen and pale with a hint of sickly green splotches all over. Her teeth keeps chattering despite the heat radiating from her skin.  
  
“Hey,” Zuko greets first, unsure of what to say. Instead, he carefully slips into the bed with them, rounding his arm around Katara, guiding her head into his shoulder. “Hey. I’m here.”   
  
Katara’s breaths tremble. “I… hey. Shit, Zuko, I’m sorry.”  
  
“Don’t be stupid,” he gently scolds her. “You did nothing wrong.”   
  
“I—I didn’t know how, it happened, it was in our tea—”  
  
“—Shit, ‘Tara,” Zuko couldn’t help himself. His body went rigid, horrified of what would happen if only it would have gone differently. If it had gotten all of them, all he’s ever loved and cared about. “It was in…?”  
  
“It should have been me, Zuko,” Katara sobs into him, her tears soaking his robes. “It should have been me instead.”  
  
“Hey, _hey,_ no,” He coos softly, wrapping both arms around her. “Don’t do that. It’s not your— _fuck_ , Toph—”  
  
Toph began to stir in her sleep with the small commotion they were causing, sensing how upset the two were. Her panicked as her incoherent mumbles began to increase, hands grasping weakly for Katara.  
  
“Hey, hey, ‘s okay, Toph,” Katara whispers so softly to her ears, as if she was soothing a newborn. She tugs the younger girl higher into her lap, pressing her head to her chest, cradling her, shushing her. “Shhhh, hey, I’m here, I’m right here—you’re safe. I’m keeping you safe.”   
  
Toph lets out a pained moan as she curls smaller into Katara’s arms, her breathing irrationally fast and short. Zuko shoots up from his position to _move, move, do something—_  
  
“Zuko—Zuko, stop, you’re making it worse,” Katara tells him frantically. “She’s scared, you need to calm down, please—”  
  
“Okay, okay, okay,” He breathes, holding both his palms back. “Okay. I—it’s okay, Toph, it’s just Zuko.”   
  
“It’s just Zuko,” she nods, repeating it to her. “It’s just Zuko. It’s okay.”  
  
“Let me hold her,” Zuko suggests, sighing softly when Katara shook her head to that almost immediately. “You need rest too, Katara. You’re tired.”  
  
“I…” Katara looks at him helplessly. “Okay. I—okay. Just be gentle with her—”  
  
“—I know, I know,” He assures her. “I’ll take care of her.”  
  
“Yeah. Okay. Okay.”  
  
“Give her to me?”  
  
They carefully moved Toph into Zuko’s arms, moving so slow and gentle as if the girl was a fragile glass vase that could break into pieces at any moment. In that moment, Zuko felt like she is. He wanted to keep her inside a locked cupboard so that she could never get hurt again.   
  
(But of course he can’t, no matter how much he wants to. All he could really do was sit there as he watches Toph feel for his scar when Katara whispers to her that Zuko’s holding her now.)  
  
“Take care of her,” Katara kept rambling, “I just—I just need sleep, for a while—if she wakes up and she’s hurt, or upset, please—”  
  
“Katara, _hey,”_ Zuko squeezes her arm with his free hand that’s not supporting Toph, “I’ve got this.”   
  
“Yeah.” She nods, “Yeah, you do—okay.”  
  
  
  
She drifts off to sleep almost immediately once her head hits the pillow.   
  


  
  
Zuko leans his head against the headboard of the bed and exhales a long, tired breath. Toph kept mumbling in her sleep.   
  
He swipes off the damp, messy bangs off her scorching forehead and holds her closer. It had been four years since the war had ended, but Zuko had always seen the little girl inside Toph no matter how old she was getting. He wasn’t sure if he could stop seeing her as his baby sister.   
  
_“She’s growing on you,”_ he remembers Sokka say, that one afternoon all those years ago while they set camp on the shore, watching Toph bicker with Katara. _“That’s a good sign.”_  
  
 _“Good, because I don’t think I’d want to be one of you guys’ enemies anymore,”_ was what Zuko had replied with. He was only half joking when he says it—between a bloodbender, a crazy powerful twelve-years-old who invented mentalbending, and _the fucking avatar,_ he doesn’t think he’d stand a chance anymore.   
  
_“I bet you don’t.”_ Sokka just laughs at that. “ _You’re a lucky guy, you know—after all, it’s Toph who adopts you, not otherwise.”  
  
_ And as he held the same girl in his arms four years later, he really was lucky to have her, after all.   
  
  
  
  
If Toph doesn’t survive this…   
  
  
  
“I’m not going to let you,” Zuko whispers to her, hot tears pricking in his eyes yet again, his words choked out as the pain in his chest settles. “I’m _not.”_  
  
Because he doesn’t know what he’d do without her, without any of them.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
Time passes by excruciatingly slow, even more than usual. He sat there watching over Toph breathe for hours until his arms went numb, until he couldn’t feel his legs anymore.   
  
When Sokka finally opens the door with Suki and Aang after him, he couldn’t help but jolt up from his place before easing himself back down, careful not to startle Toph. The three walked over silently to the bed, their expressions unreadable.   
  
Sokka slumps down on the floor right beside where his sister rests on the bed. He buries his head on the covers for a moment, before looking up again and stroking Katara’s messy hair. “It’s okay,” he tells her. Then to both of Zuko; “it’s going to be okay.”   
  
“What…?”   
  
“They’ve found it, the cure,” Suki elaborates for their tired boyfriend, sitting down in front of him. “Your mother’s working on it. It’ll be here soon. Are you…” she reaches up to cup his cheek again, “okay?”   
  
“Y… yeah,” Zuko exhales, giving her a small smile, “I’m okay.” He wanted to bury himself in Suki’s arms like he always does after a long day, with Sokka’s body against him, just the three of them—but Toph’s presence in his arms prevents him to.   
  
“The guards are still working searching for the suspect,” Aang added, not caring enough about what he’s saying at all. Instead, his eyes watches Katara softly, contrast to the towering presence that he carries (Sokka would never shut up about how Aang’s sudden growth spurt changed his whole charisma so much). “Is Katara… okay?”  
  
“She’ll be okay,” Suki assures. “Just… tired. We all are.”  
  
“I think a break is what we need,” Sokka sighs, pressing a kiss to his sister’s forehead before walking around the bed to the other side, exchanging his place with Aang. His eyes saddens when he sees the Toph curled up in his arms, but Suki tugs him closer and wraps her own arms around him, kissing his cheek softly before letting go.   
  
“Let me hold her,” She says. “You just got out of a six-hour meeting, Zu—you need rest, too.”   
  
“Yeah,” Zuko sighs. There was no point on arguing with his Kyoshi warrior girlfriend, anyway. “Okay.”   
  
Suki leans closer into Toph, running her fingers through her bangs exactly as Zuko did. “Hey, Toph,” she whispers to her, “It’s me, Suki. I’m going to hold you now, okay?”  
  
Toph mumbles something calmly in her sleep, and they took that as a good sign. Easing her into Suki’s arms was easier than when Katara did to him—Toph didn’t seem to be as upset as she was, as if she could sense that she was going to be okay. That _everything_ is going to be okay.   
  
“Rest,” Sokka ordered, pulling him into his lap.   
  
Zuko nods gratefully and relaxes into his boyfriend’s lap. “Love you,” he croaks out, “I love you both.”   
  
And just like that, they were all together again, just like all those years ago.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
_Yeah_. They’ll be okay _._ Zuko was sure of it.  
  
  


(As long as they were all here, at least. The six of them—they were all he really need.)  
  
  
  
He closes his eyes and finally lets himself rest.   
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> [my tumblr blog !!](https://hereforthehurts.tumblr.com/)


End file.
